A magazine on the MAKE

For Sarah Dodson, working the bar at Gunther Murphy's Public House, a now-shuttered Lakeview watering hole, was like being in a classroom.

Here, regulars bellied up to the bar and discussed new authors, the local literary community and the definition of "Chicago writing." When she and a couple of friends started a literary magazine called MAKE, her fellow libation-loving literary scholars offered some sage suggestions:

•"Where you place an ad matters."

•"Put a cost per issue on the cover."

•"Get a copy editor!"

"Bartending proved to be instrumental in how the magazine was formed because of the customers giving advice," Dodson said (coincidentally) over beers recently. "These were sort of obvious things, when you think about it, but at the time we were just trying to get MAKE to as many people as possible, without realizing what we needed ... to do well by our contributors and our advertisers."

That was in 2005, when MAKE was just getting off the ground. Today MAKE, which has an all-volunteer staff, is still going strong, publishing roughly two issues every year. The magazine also hosts five events a year, has 200 subscribers and receives 100 submissions per month.

This year marks two major changes for MAKE. First, Dodson announced that she is stepping down as managing editor to focus on her role as executive director of MAKE Literary Productions, which will allow her to broaden the organization's purpose. Katrina Sogaard Anderson, assistant managing editor for Issue 13, will assume the lead role starting with Issue 14, due out in the spring.

Second, the magazine made its first venture into bilingual publishing with Issue 13, "Exchange/Intercambio," which was released this month. The issue included pieces translated from Spanish into English as well as work translated from English into Spanish.

Incorporating translations into MAKE's pages has been on Dodson's mind since the magazine's fourth issue, "Sister Cities: The International Issue," which featured some poems in translation from various languages into English. The editors focused on a bilingual issue after Dalkey Archive Press released its Global Translation Initiative Study in March 2011. The study noted a widely accepted estimate: Of all books published in the U.S., only 2-3 percent are translations.

"We were at this point as a magazine where we wanted to take on something that would be challenging to us and also call attention to something that we thought was underrecognized," Dodson said.

Brenda Lozano, a writer based in Mexico City who came on as Spanish contributing editor for Issue 13, proved instrumental in helping the mostly Chicago-based crew acquire work from Latino authors. She also helped edit the Spanish text and contributed a piece in Spanish to the issue.

Dodson and Lozano discovered common ground as they edited, "which is similar to exchanging mix tapes with a friend," Lozano said. "It's a way of saying: 'Hey, this is a great piece, do you know it?' And that's what we tried to do in this bilingual issue of MAKE."

MAKE's editors plan to continue including Spanish translations of select pieces in future issues as well as online.

Over the years MAKE has increased the number of pages and the size of its staff, and the content became more adventurous. Other aspects of the publication have endured, namely the inventive design, the high-quality art portfolios and the point of view.

That consistency is due largely to the fact that more than half the editors have been with the magazine since its beginning. The staff's devotion is clear from the publication's carefully crafted words and creative graphics.

"Having come of age in zine culture in the'90s, (I feel) there's such a great DIY spirit" at MAKE," said Joel Craig, poetry editor. "On every level, editors are bringing their experience from unique perspectives and are encouraged to bring what they know and love."

Anderson knows that for a magazine that has thrived on consistency, change can be difficult.

"I won't come in and say I want to make changes now that I am managing editor," she said. "I am starting humbly. MAKE is great already. Hopefully I can offer a new perspective and help to keep ours a tightly run ship."